Everything You Need to Know About Coworking in 2019 (So Far!)

This year at Coworker, our team has been working hard to fulfill our mission of being the go-to resource for discovering, booking, and reviewing coworking spaces around the world for entrepreneurs, SMEs, and large corporations alike.

As of July 14, 2019, Coworker has officially welcomed more than 12,000 member spaces across 168 countries. We thought this would be a great milestone to stop, reflect, and analyze our data to better understand the industry and current trends.

In fact, we’ve just finished counting thousands of votes from this year’s Coworker Members’ Choice Awards. (Did you cast your vote!?) As a result of our findings, we’ve collected some truly fascinating facts about coworking—such as coworkers’ expectations of their shared work spaces and some behind-the-scenes secrets from coworking operators.

So, let’s explore what you need to know about coworking in 2019 based on the special insights we’ve gathered so far this year!

Global Capacity & Size of Coworking Spaces

Earlier this year, we wanted to take a closer look at 6,500 of our member coworking spaces to assess how different spaces measured up in terms of size, capacity, and density. We noticed a trend in the growing sizes of coworking spaces, which made our analysis all the more important to understanding continental space distribution, as well as the countries and cities leading the race for the largest spaces.

Here’s what we found:

• The global average capacity per coworking space was 83 people.
• The global average size for coworking spaces was 7,308 sq. ft.
• China ranks as the country with the largest capacity, at 282 people on average per space. China also has the largest spaces in terms of size, with an average size of 27,077 sq. ft.

• In comparing continents, North America has the largest spaces in the world with an average size of 9,799 sq. ft., followed by Asia at 8,101 sq. ft.

The trend toward larger coworking spaces — which are more profitable over the long term — has led many coworking companies to move to larger premises or open additional locations to accommodate an expanded customer base. 

To learn more about the insights we uncovered based on capacity and size data, you can download our full report.

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Global Space Distribution & Desk Prices

At the end of 2018, we took a special look at the 9,452 coworking spaces which made up our Coworker network at that time. We found it interesting to analyze the global distribution of our member coworking spaces and were proud to represent spaces in 158 total countries at the end of last year.

Across the six continents, Europe had the largest number of coworking spaces at 3,100 total spaces, with Asia coming in second (2,586 spaces) and North America in a close third-place position (2,278).

We also saw the global desk price average drop from $205 USD (Jan. 2018) to $187 USD (Dec. 2018). This number was driven down by price competition in the maturing shared office space market, as well as the expansion of coworking spaces across second and third-tier cities in a variety of countries, like India and Australia. 

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Insights from the 2019 Coworker Members’ Choice Awards

As we mentioned above, we just finished counting the votes of the 2019 Coworker Members’ Choice Awards and discovered some pretty interesting insights into the coworking industry from the thousands of responses. (Thanks to everyone who voted!)

We’ll be launching our Official Data Report from the CMCAs soon, which will be shared with all of our member space operators as a token of thanks for participating.

Until then, here are some of the key takeaways we uncovered from this year’s results, which were comprised of votes from 1,336 cities in 126 countries around the world:

• 40.93% of voters have pursued ventures with people they’ve met at their coworking space.
• 52.6% agreed their coworking space has helped them make new friends.
• 47.68% believe their coworking space offers many different types of professional development opportunities (conferences, special discounts, classes, etc.)
• When choosing a coworking space, which is the most important feature (on a scale of 1-10)?
  • Workspace comfort
  • Location
  • The community & its network
  • Amenities
  • Space design
  • The community manager(s)
  • Pricing
  • Proximity to public transport
  • Access to multiple locations
  • Car or bike parking

Moreover, we also asked space operators and managers to answer a specific set of questions related to their coworking space’s founding and future plans. Of the respondents, we discovered…

• 41.8% of operators said their coworking space was founded 2-3 years ago
• 69.42% of operators said they currently have coworking spaces in one city
• 37.76% of operators said their space plans to open between 2-3 new locations by 2020
• 77.14% of operators said they plan to expand by opening new locations

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As the coworking industry continues to evolve and expand into new markets, the demand for shared office space shows no signs of slowing down. With these and so many other data points to analyze, we can’t wait to see what the end of this year will bring for coworking. 

Stay tuned for more industry insights brought to you by the Coworker team!